blogging – getting heard by being read

Some irony in the news that a blogger wins the 3rd prize in the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage based on a recently published book of her bloggings? Nevertheless it allowed a voice to come through which might not have been developed and heard otherwise. Using the pseudonym Riverbend though better known under the blog’s name Baghdad Burning since the beginning of 2003 a femal voice blogging from Iraq made herself known not only as a Girl’s Blog but as opening to a unique view via her reports/posts from that region:

Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman, writes an Internet diary, using a pseudonym. Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills make her account of the life of a normal Iraqi family, which has also been published in book form as Baghdad Burning, one of the most uniquely critical documents of life in this abused country under the conditions of the war and the US military occupation.